The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 104

It was their pre-arranged signal.

It meant he was here.

Elias had followed the text's instructions and successfully infiltrated the heavily guarded golden cage.

Annelise's expression remained perfectly neutral.

She even raised her glass with a polite smile in Harriet's direction, looking for all the world like she was simply greeting a passing acquaintance.

But underneath the table, her fingernails were digging so fiercely into her palms they almost drew blood.

2:55 PM.

At the head table, Barnum Lehman suddenly set down his teacup and stood up.

His movement was abrupt enough to draw curious glances from the business moguls seated with him.

Barnum waved a dismissive hand, forcing a somewhat composed smile onto his face.

"Please excuse me, gentlemen. I'm going to go check on the dessert service."

Without giving anyone a chance to question him, he turned and power-walked toward the back doors.

Out of the corner of her eye, Annelise watched Felix and two black-suited bodyguards immediately fall into step behind him.

Their movements were rushed yet deliberately muted, like a pack of trained hunting dogs closing in on prey.

The vast majority of the guests didn't even notice the subtle departure.

Their attention had already been hijacked by the swelling music and the emcee's booming, charismatic voice.

"Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed friends! The moment we've all been waiting for!"

The emcee's voice echoed through the grand hall, practically buzzing with festive energy.

"Let us put our hands together and welcome our stunning bride, Clarissa Sherwood, back to the stage! She will now say a few words of gratitude on behalf of the family to everyone who has supported them!"

Thunderous applause erupted.

Annelise clapped along with the crowd.

Her eyes cut through the sea of guests, landing one final time on the massive antique clock.

The second hand clicked relentlessly toward its final destination.

Three, two, one.

3:00 PM on the dot.

He wore a sharp, dark trench coat that seemed to drag the bitter autumn chill into the room with him.

He was tall and rigidly straight, exuding the immovable presence of an ancient pine surviving a frozen wasteland.

The lighting was too dim to clearly make out his face.

But the suffocating, blood-and-iron aura rolling off him cast an immediate, terrifying net over the entire banquet hall.

He stood there like a silent avenger crawling out of hell.

The spotlight operator flinched, sending a stray beam of light sweeping across the man's face.

It was a face carved from ice.

Harsher, leaner, and infinitely colder than the man smiling in the military memorial portrait behind the stage.

His features shared a fleeting resemblance to Hackett's, but the essence was entirely different.

Hackett's coldness was born of elitist arrogance, the calculated detachment of a surgeon's scalpel.

This man's coldness bled straight from his bones. It was the brutal, decisive lethality of a soldier who had waded through mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

Elias Lehman, the man who had been declared dead for three years, really was back.